Saturday, March 30, 2013

Are you a
religious wine drinker?I would
guess your answer would be, “NO!” – or am I wrong? However I think you are,
more than you know.

Religious
is a word, which doesn’t rime anything groovy when it comes to wine. Religious
wine drinkers are just too much – out of reach and preaching constant
meaningless mumbo-jumbo.

If you are
an atheist you will most certainly not feel comfortable in a religious crowd of
wine drinkers. Thing is with the religious – not only do they understand their
own religion, but they are also far more narrow minded and will also look down
upon those who just don’t “get it”.

Religious
wine drinkers are currently linked to the natural wine movement. Before
that it was the biodynamic thing – the Rudolf Steiners disciples and it
probably still is. The natural wine drinkers are here in the Danish press being
portrayed as the “hooded”, which isn’t exactly positive. As I do indeed drink a natural wine I
find myself being defined as someone who was brought up with parents, who only
made food over open fire, had frizzy hair and bad breath.

Natural
wine drinkers praise wines, which are beyond flawed with vinegar profiles,
smells of cow shit and have volatile acidity. Despite their enthusiasm we doubt
their motives. They have to be under some kind of spell to praise such crap.
They have to be disciples of some kind of movement. They have to be religious.

Seriously?

Could it be
religious just happens to be the same as passionate? Because what does it mean
to be religious?

If you Google it in Danish + Wikipedia
(directly Googled translated from Danish to English) it comes up with this
definition:

A religious experience is an experience that
leaves a human experience religion immediately. The experience is not in itself
dependent on either faith or thinking. Not more than eg. a color experience a
musical experience or a humorous experience it. The question of faith comes
first into the picture afterwards, when considering whether the experience was
authentic or a hallucination.

A religious experience might be something big
and dramatic as such. A miracle or a revelation, but the vast majority of
religious experiences are quite undramatic, which may not even be
"done" something. These experiences do not affect primarily through
individual experience strength, but rather through their quantity. For many
people, religious experiences something everyday that occurs many times each
day

So
basically religious is a range of experiences you can’t explain. The only sort
of proof you have, when it comes to wine, is the string of these occurrences is
affecting your emotions. You will most certainly be curious to find out what
specifically happened and see if you can bring that feeling forward again and
again. What often happens in this process is the search for patterns and
meaning – and sometimes also a conclusion. But not always do you find a conclusion. Some experiences are
left open, surrounded by mystery and fascination.

Let’s take
one step further.

In a weekly
Danish radio show called “Spirit in the bottle” (link – it’s in Danish) the
host, Poul Pilgaard Johnsen explains how he can’t exactly pin point what makes
wine almost feel like a drug. Yet he has never taken drugs, but to him wine can
bring him to a state of ecstasy and trance.

I feel the
same way – and I don’t have any proof. I just know that the wine fix is highly
addictive.

But in fact
the evidence is right in front of us.

"The word flavour stands for the composite
sense

of taste, smell and 'mouth feel' in the field
of research,

which is about perception with the intake of
food and drink (called

»The sensors'). Flavour is thus an expression
of a

Integration of the three primary sensations and

takes place in the brain, "

"The processed information sends further
smells into the

Limbic cortex in the part of the brain called
the 'limbic

system '. The limbic system also contains also
the

basic emotions (aggression, joy, etc.). For
more than

one sense, scents and feelings therefore
closely intertwined. "

(Source: Danish Chemistry No. 11,: Flavour -
chemically (II))

I am not
surprised that our impression of flavour is closely linked to our limbic
system. Think about it. What was it that got you interested in wine and keep
you coming back for more and more? It’s our senses and our emotions. Things we
can’t always control, because they react spontaneously. These are the catalysts
behind middle ages men like me, will describe a liquid with phrases like; mind
blowing, emotional, seductive, sexy, weightless…etc.

Wine
appreciation is born religious – fostering the passion all wine lovers posses.
It’s the unexplainable what eventually fascinates us – encapsulates and intoxicates
our passion. The opposite is predictable reason and control. Seems like it,
because it’s so much easier to communicate and handle – especially if you write
for a consumer audience.

But who the
hell care about reason and control in wine? Wine is bigger than an Excel sheet
– otherwise I wouldn’t even bother to write these lines.

As I see
it, we are desperately trying to remove the unexplainable (and potentially the
religious) – aren’t we aware that our minds are constantly under influence? Is
it science fiction that people can have fluctuating moods?

My
confession is that I am a religious wine drinker and so are you – or maybe you
just forgot.